290816 - Prayer

The smell of joss sticks always makes me think of too much.

When I was younger, the smell was uncomfortable - it was smoky and burned my eyes, and I didn't like it because I felt like I was choking, like the tendrils of smoke were coiling around my throat and slowly but surely squeezing the life out of me. It didn't help that I had a fear of going to the temple when I was younger either - the bright-painted deities sitting on the shelves of the temple scared me, like they were watching my every movement and didn't welcome me because I didn't know what to do in front of them - and I soon learned to loathe and fear the smell of incense.

Things tend to change as you grow older, though, and when I finally learnt to accept my Chinese heritage and culture I learned to get used to the smell of the smoke - it wasn't as though you could avoid it when you visited the temple, after all.

Over time, I actually learned to like the smell of the smoke, and I used to think about how the smoke from the joss sticks were to carry the prayers and wishes of the people to the Jade Emperor (at least, I think it was supposed to be the Jade Emperor). How wonderfully strange it was to think of that, don't you think? That the smoke from the joss stick you were carrying was so seemingly insignificant, and yet had the power to tell whoever was listening about what you were praying for.,
I've said it before - the concept of prayer is not foreign to me, but the concept of praying FOR someone is.

It's because of how personal prayer is - you put yourself in such a position that you are bowed down to someone (or perhaps someTHING) on a higher plane than you are , and you beseech them to listen to you, you who are no more significant to them than an ant waving its antennae at your boot. You pray that they hear you, for one, and then you pray that they take notice of what you pray for and decide to help you along in realising your prayer.

So you put yourself in such a position to ask for said higher-ups to listen to your prayer for someone else who is not you. Speaking selfishly, why should you be praying for someone else in the first place, right? Humans are selfish creatures by nature, and I fail to understand sometimes why they do things for others when it serves them no benefit.

Perhaps it is because these someone elses are people who are close to them, perhaps family. That I can understand, which ends up in the reason why I protest so vehemently when someone who is not related by blood tells me that they have prayed for me. 

I am not your family;
My soul is past saving.

Why would you pray for me?

I used to be so afraid when someone said they'd prayed for me - I used to wonder if I was so far gone that someone felt the need to pray for my salvation. It took some time to understand that it was possible to ask for simple blessings, the same way I used to ask for blessings for those I cared about when I visited the temple and looked up into the deities' face and offered my meagre offerings of joss sticks and a rambling prayer in broken Mandarin Chinese. 

Which is why I can understand now, and why I now know better than to protest when someone close to me says they have prayed for me - if it comes from a place of good intentions, who am I to be so unspeakably rude as to refuse it?

It is also the reason for why I now know that there are certain people I have accepted into my life, simply by observing who I pray for when I visit the temple and ask for blessings. In the same way that I can accept how the people who pray for me see me as family, I can also accept that the people I pray for are my family in more than blood as well.

...I'm rambling, aren't I?
It's been a long day, with too many prayers to offer - this much is true.

And after all this time, joss sticks still make me think of sepia-coloured scenes with Rainbow Kueh and chestnut soup and Siang Pure Oil and grandmother, everything my grandmother was to my childhood.